


Asyndeton

by beng



Series: Flipping Coins [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Isabela gone AWOL, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beng/pseuds/beng
Summary: The Qunari have been sent packing: with the Tome of Koslun returned to them, but without Isabela; without their Arishok.Then Isabela disappears as well.Garrett copes. Really.(part of the series universe, but written as a standalone)
Relationships: Male Hawke & Aveline Vallen, Male Hawke/Isabela
Series: Flipping Coins [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629703
Kudos: 4





	Asyndeton

“Unbelievable,” Aveline sighed at the top of the stair once she saw what Hawke’s shadowy loft above the library had turned into. 

Garrett knew that calling it a mess would be an understatement. Nearly all surfaces were burried under his Bone Pit logbooks, crumpled tax notices, old leather-bound tomes; there were barrels of mysterious origins peeking out from under a bale of Highever weave, his collection of maps strewn all over the loft. For a long moment the guard captain stared at the stuffed nug carelessly propped on top of a pile of torn pants, then shook her head in disgust.

“How can you even breathe in this pigsty, Hawke?” she growled, turning to pick her way through the jetsam.

Sitting in his old armchair among crates of dusty wine bottles, Garrett swirled his drink in its heavy glass tumbler, his eyes carefully shuttered under a mask of pleasant openness. 

“Well, hello to you too.” 

“When have you last had this room cleaned?” She removed some correspondence from the low table Hawke used for writing, sat down on it, face to face with her fellow Fereldan. “When have you last left the estate?”

He gave her a flash of his teeth, an almost-grin that hurt him like a papercut.

“Believe it or not, I was out just this morning. The world has not stopped demanding my attention just because Isabela’s gone, Aveline. It does not stop even for the Champion of Kirkwall.”

“Hawke…” Aveline sighed. “You know we didn’t really get along, so-”

“I know. Guess you saw right through her, while I was just had like a schoolboy. You never liked the pirate. Never trusted the whore.”

Aveline shook her head. “At least I’m honest with you; that’s more than you can say about Isabela. Have you considered that perhaps her leaving is for the best?”

“Can’t say that I have.” 

Aveline stared at her hands as she leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Words had never been the good guard captain’s strong suit. Why had she even come, Hawke wondered. To gloat? To throw in his face that she’d told him so?

“I’m sorry it came to this,” she offered. “I’m not sure what else to say. I’m just trying to be your friend.”

Hawke sighed. He was nowhere as drunk as one might think, finding him brooding in semi-darkness with drink in hand. Somehow, it was the aesthetic of grief that soothed him. A memory, perhaps, of happier days in the Hanged Man?

So shoot him, his best pal was a best-selling author who taught him to see his own life in terms of stories, setting up a scene, pacing the action.

He’d been an idiot thinking he could anticipate the plot twists. The others, however…

“You all knew how this was going to end,” Hawke said. “Knew it so much better than me. You don’t have to look so beaten up about it.” 

Aveline glanced away as if ashamed. Why? She’d been right, after all.

“I’m still sorry she hurt you.”

“That’s entirely on me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Fine. I’ll take that. Because it’s clearly _my_ judgement that has been compromised.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Hawke glared into his drink, then chuckled mirthlessly. “That’s the difference between you two. With you, I know everything for certain. Like, if I’d offer you this fine dwarven _aqua vitae_ , you’d refuse ‘cos you’re on the clock; I’d pretend to try to change your mind, you’d remind me of duty… But Seabird’s so… She’s so unknowable.”

No, that wasn't right. He'd known Isabela was unknowable; he got treated like a stinky dishrag, left behind all the same. Now what if he was wrong about Aveline? About Varric? Trusting his brother had already cost Hawke. The question wasn't even about the trustworthiness of others, as much as it was about the astuteness of his own instincts.

Garry closed his eyes, leaning his head against the back of the chair.

“Let’s just skip this nonsense, Aveline. Spare me this dreary predictability of well-meaning friends, come to support a guy after a shitty breakup…”

“At least I know what loyalty is, unlike _some,”_ Aveline snapped. “Don’t let Isabela’s treachery change who you are, Hawke. You’re a good person, a good friend. Don’t let her lies poison you from inside.”

Hawke laughed. “Inside? How do you know what kind of a person I am inside?”

“Well, did Isabela?”

“Look, just…” Hawke glanced away, ran the hand not holding the drink through his messy hair. He glanced around the disaster his library loft had turned into. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll ask Varric to help me sort out the documents. Bodahn can sort out the rest. I’ll be fine.”

“And…?”

“And nothing.”

“Hawke, you deserve better than nothing. You deserve someone reliable, responsible, faithful… Someone actually _caring_.” 

Garry glared at her. The worst thing was he honestly had no idea anymore if he could still trust his gut feeling, his judgement, his bleeding heart that railed at everything Aveline said about his Seabird.

“Merrill’s Dread Wolf alone knows what I _deserve_ ,” he growled. “I hope I still know what I _need:_ to be left alone about this. To lick my wounds, pull my shit together, answer the blighted letters. That’s as good as it’s going to be.”

He let his glance roam the messy room. Disjointed. Unstructured. An asyndeton in flesh if he ever saw one, except there was no artistic intention in this, only his own stupidity.

Some binding aspect that had tied it all together in a structure light and swift as an attack with dual blades, had collapsed, had gone missing. Had gone adventuring on the roads of Thedas.

“That’s my life, has always been I guess, when you take away the Rivaini,” Garry murmured. “A crescendo of duties, taxes, problems. A maelstrom of disappointment; a swamp of boredom. There is no 'And they lived happily ever after’. After all this, after Isabela, there is no 'and’.”

Forcing another smile, Hawke leaned forward to pat Aveline on the knee, then downed the remainder of his drink.

“Seabird never swore unending love to me or anything. I’ll be fine, promise.”

It sounded almost convincing.

It sounded like shit.

**Author's Note:**

> Asyndeton — a stylistic device, also called 'lack of ands', used in literature and poetry to intentionally eliminate conjunctions between the phrases, and in the sentence, yet maintain grammatical accuracy.  
> Basically, I took a literary device as a prompt and ran with it: go on and find the few 'ands' in this story :) Garry loves 'applied storytelling' and is friends with Varric, so I figured he'd be familiar with it.


End file.
